Car and motorsport enthusiasts often use the terminology informally in magazines and blogs to describe vehicle response to steering in a variety of manoueuvres.
Many properties of the vehicle affect the understeer gradient, including tyre cornering stiffness, camber thrust, lateral force compliance steer, self aligning torque, lateral weight transfer, and compliance in the steering system.
The former is concerned with tire distortion effects due to slip and camber angles as increasing levels of lateral acceleration are attained.
It is best to use race driver's descriptive terms "push (plow) and loose (spin)" for limit behavior so that these concepts are not confused.
Push (plow) can be understood as a condition where, while cornering, the front tyres become saturated before the rear and slip first.
Generally, though, it is changes to the center of mass which cause tyre saturation and inform limit handling characteristics.
If the center of mass is moved forward, the understeer gradient tends to increase due to tyre load sensitivity.
Conversely, when the vehicle accelerates, the opposite happens, the weight shifts to the rear tires.
Similarly, as the center of mass of the load is shifted from one side to the other, the inside or outside tyres traction changes.
While weight distribution and suspension geometry have the greatest effect on measured understeer gradient in a steady-state test, power distribution, brake bias and front-rear weight transfer will also affect which wheels lose traction first in many real-world scenarios.
When an oversteering vehicle is taken to the grip limit of the tyres, it becomes dynamically unstable with a tendency to spin.